BRENTWOOD, Tenn. — So many times, schools, restaurants, venues, and institutions go through updates and improvements to keep up with the times.
Sometimes, that also means leaving the building's history behind.
I went to one middle Tennessee school going through its own growing pains and learned about the project to reunite hundreds of pictures with alumni who have long since moved on.
“These pictures are our Allstate photos of athletes going back to the mid-1980s,” said Brentwood High School Assistant Athletic Director Coach Gabe Evans.
He was talking about the stacks and stacks and stacks of alumni pictures.
According to Evans, these aren't even all of the pictures. There are more than 250 pictures of alumni who used to have a space on the wall.
“With a limited wall space and the expense of how much it is to add these, we add 10+ every year. It was getting extremely expensive to do that,” said Evans. “It’s a good problem to have.”
They've solved one problem: instead of on the lobby wall, they're displaying the photos through a digital touch board.
But solving one problem created another: reuniting all these pictures with their rightful owners.
“It all comes back to trying to honor and respect our student-athletes of the success as they’ve had,” said Evans.
With accolades in baseball, football, and swimming, 2014 graduate Aaron Maher heard through word of mouth there was a frame with his face in it.
“I think I smile differently. Other than that, I look the same,” said Maher.
He's picking up his frame and a few others as he wasn't the only one in his family with the athletic genes.
“My dad will be fired up about this,” he said.
Back in the early aughts, Aaron would look up at the 20-foot-high gym lobby walls and look forward to a time when his picture would hang alongside his siblings.
“I know some people say, ‘close the yearbook,’ but if you enjoyed something in the past, I don’t see there's anything wrong with still enjoying it,” said Maher.
With his middle school sweetheart and a toddler at home, what serves as a piece of nostalgia to one generation may now serve as a frame of inspiration for the next.
“It is still a cool thing to show him, and hopefully, he follows in those footsteps,” said Maher.
As for what happens if you don’t reclaim these pictures, the school wants to focus on reuniting them with their owners for now.
If you want to retrieve your picture, email melissa.gerlach@wcs.edu
If you have thoughts on this story, email me at Amanda.Roberts@newschannel5.com
